| Real Live Woman finds Trisha Yearwood fully embracing the inner soft-rocker
she's flirted with for years, and so it makes sense that it's the most
fully realized album of her career. Her Cali-rock jones gets a fix here
thanks to a Linda Ronstadt cover ("Try Me Again") and a guest shot by
Jackson Browne on "Sad Eyes," a Los Angeles-era Springsteen number, but
the voice remains hers--a modern-day country girl who's been uptown and
likes it. The result is an album that finds the middle ground between
the sonic options won for country radio by the Dixie Chicks, the adult-contemporary
blues of Wynnona and Bonnie Raitt, and perhaps even, amazingly, a bit
of Garth's Chris Gaines project. The title track's the real keeper, a
country-soul anthem that revisits the character Yearwood first introduced
in songs like "She's in Love with the Boy" and "XXX's and OOO's" and finds
her a good deal wiser now--and feeling blessed to know it. |
